and the first part of the 19th, seven Northern states abolished slavery.1 The institution was not a significant part of these states’ economies, of course, and there were very few slaves to be freed or (in some cases) to be sold in jurisdictions where slavery remained legal.
When seven slave states seceded between December 1860 and February 1861, they were outnumbered by the eight slave states still in the Union. Four of these eight seceded after Fort Sumter. Among the four slave states that remained was the border state of Maryland. This column will examine the events between 1861 and 1864 that led to the abolition of slavery in the Old Line State.
According to the 1860 census, Maryland’s total population was 687,049, of which one-quarter was black. The number of slaves had fallen steadily between 1800 and 1860, as the number of free blacks grew. In the final census before the war, the slave population was only slightly greater than the population of free blacks, 87,189 to 83,942, with over one-third of the free blacks living in Baltimore. Slavery was obviously declining in importance, largely due to the decline of tobacco farming and the growing industrialization of the state’s economy. A smaller (and less profitable) tobacco sector meant that slave labor was less valuable. Hence the cost of manumission was lower, as farmers shifted to other crops for which slave labor was less important. There were measures to curtail the rights of the growing population of free blacks (e.g., vagrancy laws, limits on access to the courts, and restrictions on the return of free blacks who had left the state). In addition, societies were formed to encourage free blacks to settle in Liberia.
In 1837 a constitutional amendment was adopted that prohibited the legislature from abolishing slavery except by a unanimous vote. While the voice for abolition was weak, it was growing, and the pro-slavery lobby created this insurmountable obstacle to forestall future trouble. A new efore the American Revolution slavery was practiced in all 13 British colonies which were to form the United States. In the last years of the 18th century constitution, adopted in 1851, went further, and prohibited the legislature from abolishing slavery. Nevertheless, the direction was clear. The state was moving away from slavery, if at a slow pace. The Civil War increased the pace dramatically.
While abolition was not initially a war aim of the Lincoln administration, and while the institution of slavery was not abolished until the passage of the 13th Amendment, huge numbers of slaves, by various means, escaped bondage during the war. Many sought and received refuge by crossing into Union lines, with many men working as laborers for the military. Large numbers of escapees were housed in contraband camps, where they worked and were often schooled. The recruitment of black soldiers, controversial at first, was accepted as the war lengthened. Tens of thousands were accepted into the army.
These dynamics were at work in every part of the Confederacy penetrated by Federal forces. The situation in the loyal slave state of Maryland followed the same pattern but on a more pronounced scale. The United States army was everywhere. Finding refuge at a military facility was not especially difficult. The District of Columbia, where slavery was abolished in April 1862, was a short journey from much of the state. An escaped slave could get lost in the crowd of the tens of thousands of free blacks. The Fugitive Slave Act was a dead letter. The army needed men, and recruiters seldom made serious inquiry about the status of a black volunteer, especially if the volunteer’s master was, or was suspected of being, disloyal to the Union. In those cases where inquiry was made, loyal slave owners were compensated if they granted permission. The situation was fluid, of course, but the trend was unmistakable and clearly irreversible. Sometimes owners found it expedient simply to look the other way as their slaves walked away. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to Maryland, of course, but at that stage of the war that fact hardly mattered: many thousands of Maryland slaves were already, and by then certainly, “thenceforward, and forever free.”2